'Mayor of Shotwell Street' barely recognizes longtime neighborhood

By Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
These days, the “mayor of Shotwell Street” doesn’t recognize many of his constituents.
“I don’t know who the new people in the block are now,” said Don Tassio, who has lived on Shotwell just off 24th Street for almost 50 years. “They go to work in the morning, then you see them at night time, then you don’t see them again. ... They don’t chitchat for anything.”
“But they all know me,” he said. “Somebody will say, ‘Hey Don, how are you?’ And I’ll say, ‘Who is this guy?’ ”
Tassio, 85, still performs his ceremonial duties. His chief responsibility is taking people’s recycling to the curb on Mondays. Sometimes he checks in on a homebound neighbor.
Shotwell had a mayor before Tassio, but “when he died,” Tassio said, “I kind of took over.”
Over the years, the job has only gotten harder.
“I got keys for every house on the block. But I don’t know if half the keys work anymore,” he said. Then his voice dropped. “Everybody who was around here when I came are all gone. Either died or moved out. I was the youngest one.
“Now,” he said. “I’m the oldest one.”
When Tassio and his wife, Marie, were raising their children, there were six families with six kids apiece — including theirs — on the block. He said there were Sicilian, German, Irish and Portuguese families on the block.
“It was a family community area,” he said. “But then they kind of died out.”
Tassio believes most of his new neighbors are from what he calls “Silicone Valley.”
It’s all a bit much for him. He doesn’t have a computer and won’t use the cell phone his daughter gave him.
Tassio bought his two-story house with a garage underneath for $30,000 in 1966 — or the equivalent of about six months of rent at the new condos around the corner on 24th Street.
His home is full of faded color photos of his family and of Marie, who died last year. They met when he worked at Hunt’s Donuts a few blocks away on 18th Street. He was a relief baker there, making doughnuts at night.
Now, Hunt’s is gone, too. A few blocks away, the five-year-old Dynamo Donuts — home of the $3 “maple-glaze bacon apple” doughnut — caters to his new neighbors.
Tassio remembers when 24th Street “was all businesses — electrical shops, junk stores, barber shops. Now it’s all coffee shops, book shops.” There used to be three gas stations nearby. Now, he said, they’re apartment buildings.
“It’s way different from the way it used to be,” he said. “All the liquor stores are gone — except one. Can’t get rid of that guy.”
The mayor is lonely. Only one of his children lives nearby.
But he’s not selling his home. A real estate agent knocked on his door a while back and offered him $1.6 million.
“I said nope. I’m not going anywhere else,” Tassio said. “I’ll do like my grandmother did. She kept the house (in North Beach) until she died.”